 Sheba Arts Artistic Director was invited by Art with Heart to join a panel discussion on how to meaningfully engage participants and audience members from refugee and migrant communities. Each panelist shared 3 minutes of top tips and audience members asked their questions.
Here are the 4 top tips Fereshteh shared with audience members: 1:Promote self agency: people are the owner of their voices and stories and artworks: People are at the forefront of any artistic project about their experiences. Rather than speaking for them, provide opportunities for them to help them share their own stories, perspectives, and cultural heritage. This can take the form of co-creation, collaboration, or offering platforms for self-expression. At the end of the process, they will decide what they are going to do with their artwork and even if they agree to exhibit the work, they can withdraw at any time. Giving this reassurance, will release them from the burden of having a final product. 2: Create Safe and Inclusive Spaces: Create an environment where people feel safe, respected, and comfortable expressing themselves. Go to people with different access needs and ask them about their needs. Don't wait for them to apply for an opportunity because they might not have the means to apply or reach out. Understand trauma-informed approaches, being mindful of language barriers, and creating spaces where everyone feels welcome, regardless of their background. 3: Focus on Mutual Exchange and Learning Acknowledging a two-way exchange of ideas, creativity, and experiences. Share knowledge, and resources, rather than ''helping''.Don't expect people to bow in gratitude for the opportunity you gave them. 4: Be aware of Power Dynamics and Avoid Tokenism Ensure that refugee and migrant participants are treated as equal partners rather than subjects or symbols. create meaningful roles for them in decision-making processes and ensure their contributions are authentically valued and integrated into the project's artistic vision. Migrant people want to be embedded rather than being on the margins.
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 Listen to our amazing Natasha Tingle, talking about her work and the challenges she experience as a disabled artist. https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/natasha-tingle-spoken-label-july-2024-2 Natasha Tingle is a disabled writer and performer centred around Wigan, Bolton and Manchester. She loves the power and playfulness of words. She creates visual poetry that leans heavily into metaphor. She especially seeks to connect with spoken word audiences, to inspire them or make them think by speaking truth. She loves to share her quirky inner world. Sheba Arts says “Natasha is a great poet and highly skilled facilitator whose warm and vibrant energy brings out the best in those around her.” She has led and facilitated a number of community writing groups over the years as well as one-off workshops, including working with children and young people in the community and in schools, marginalised and vulnerable adult groups, neurodivergent people and others. She ran her own night online during Covid extended shielding, and in person. She likes to meet the needs she sees in the community around her. She has a poetry collection, Open Book: Ink In The Rips. Follow her on social media @natasha_tingle_poet  We were invited to be on Somos con Cecilia Ramos, the first Spanish-speaking radio station in the On Tuesday 24 October, our Executive Producer and resident Spanish speaker, Nuria, was invited to be on the radio show Somos on 96.9 ALL FM. Somos is the first Spanish radio broadcast in the Northwest of England, and is hosted by Cecilia Ramos. Nuria joined Cecilia and singer Nelson Gómez to talk about our work at Sheba Arts! Nuria spoke about the history of Sheba Arts, our current projects including Haideh & Nejad, the production of La Nagualita as part of #ShebaFest23 – made by Guatemalan artist Sally Hilton –, and how you can get involved by following our social media and subscribing to our newsletter! Somos works to promote awareness of and participation in Spanish and Latin American culture in the Northwest of England. You can listen back to Tuesday's show here: https://www.mixcloud.com/allfm969/drive-time-somos-con-cecilia-ramos-tuesday-24-october-2023/ Follow Somos, the first Spanish radio station in the Northwest:
How was your experience of working with other artists to create your own work – would you do it again? I really enjoyed working with the other artists and sharing my culture with them. We shared skills and knowledge with each other. I felt there was a great connection between all the dancers and myself, and the working environment was really good and safe. Everyone felt like they could contribute with artistic ideas and suggestions. I feel we all had different approaches and could learn a lot from each other; for example, I learned lots of new dance styles from Miss Fuego, and lots of recording and editing skills from Jova. Johnny and Su were also great, as they contributed lots of ideas and knowledge of movement and dance for the show.
What would you like to focus your career development on next? Which areas are you most interested in? I would love to continue exploring the 3 areas: dance, storytelling and costume design as I see my work is a combination of them all. I particularly think I need more support and learning to improve my dance skills (dance lessons, theatrical dance, choreography mentoring) and costume design and making. I’d love to learn about pattern cutting and making. Any other comments? My experience with Sheba Arts was LA BOMBA!* *the bomb, i.e. very good. Watch the interview highlights below!Creating Place is a ground-breaking project we co-produce with the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh. This project brings people from diverse backgrounds together to share skills and experiences and creates dialogues . In this post you learn more about this project from Beena Nouri, the main facilitator of the project.  For 12 weeks Beena worked with migrant community in Leigh town centre, in kingsleigh community centre. Each week the participants explored a different material or art form. The work in now on display at the Turnpike Gallery as a co-created, collaborative exhibition. Participants made clay tiles which Beena has put up as a wall, fitting together everyone's different designs into one big image. The explored weaving through making baskets, bowls and textiles. Beena reflected that these workshops allow people to come together and do something creative. It isn't just what's being made that matters, it's the process. There's a lot of chat in the workshops, people asking each other about ‘where is the food bank?’ or ‘I didn't know there was a gallery here, where is it?’. This artistic space opened up a soft and welcoming environment for people to get together, giving space for people to talk and build their own community. As a community facilitator and architectural designer, Beena has a unique understanding of what creating a place can mean. Beena studied an MA in Architecture and for her the combination of architecture and art is a powerful tool to redefine space for the communities it serves. Through her masters and her work as a community facilitator she is learning constantly about how people experience space. In the future she would love to put this thinking into practice and create a community centre with refugees and asylum seekers co-designed to suit the communities needs. She also highlighted the way in which refugee and asylum communities are often forced into repurposed or clinical spaces. The current hotel accommodation being a clear example of this, we spoke about how cruel it is to expect people to make a home in a place where you cannot even mark the wall or cook a meal. In hotels you can't have any ownership over your own space or what you can do in that space. Creating Place is about opening up a space where people can make things and not just inhabit them. Through this project we, as a community, can all come together and collectively make something new. The exhibition launched in July and will be open until 16th September. The celebratory event will be on 15th September at the Turnpike Gallery. Post by Maddie Wakeling 
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